


cake by the ocean

by darkavenue, phantombride



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Pirate AU, The Stolen Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 19:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10951413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkavenue/pseuds/darkavenue, https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantombride/pseuds/phantombride
Summary: “You know how hard it was to find our ship in the entirety of the bullshit ocean? Swimming sucks. Jot that the fuck down.” Lup’s fingertip creeps over the top of Lucretia’s journal to tap the blank page. “Also,” she adds, quickly and as if it's not important, “They said there's some asshole whaling ships killing their friends and we can have the Starblaster back if we take ten of them out.”“Oh, wow. I. Okay.” Lucretia’s eyes dart down and she writes ‘swimming sucks’ in tiny letters on its own page, then flips back to write the other stuff. “We can't actually do that, though. That would get us in, uh, deep trouble. With the human people here.” (By the way, Lucretia is talking at the same time that she’s writing down what Lup just told her, and it is mindblowing. Lup can’t even prepare spells and listen to music with lyrics at the same time. Lucretia keeps talking without looking up, unaware of how gone with the wind Lup’s dome is right now.) “We would basically be... I think we'd be pirates.”Taako leans in and whispers, "That's so fucking sexy."





	cake by the ocean

Taako wakes up with his face in the beach. Sand flutters away from his mouth as he groans into it. “Ugh… Lup?”

She’s shaking sand out of her hair as she watches him sit up.

“Taako…” His twin reaches down to peel a piece of seaweed off her brother’s chest. “ _What the fuck?_ ”

The last thing she remembers is the Starblaster crashing real bad, the ship flooding—At least they cast breathing spells on everyone in time. Taako’s looking around the long stretch of beach they washed up in, not another person in sight.

“Guess we got separated in the water,” he mumbles to himself.

He blinks up at Lup, pale white sand still clinging to the half of of his face that was crushed into the shore. She tells him, “You look like a half-moon cookie.”

The corner of his lip twitches upward. “Mm. At least that.”

He holds both hands up, wiggling his fingers in the air, and she catches them.

“Well, we gotta find ‘em. Even with water breathing, I don’t trust that half of them will make it,” she says as she tugs him up, their feet splashing the water where it spreads across the sand each time a wave sweeps ashore. “I mean, c’mon. You’ve seen Merle.”

“They’re hella drowned if they didn’t wash up _somewhere_ around here.”

Lup gave him a Look™. “Nah. We're the ones who casted shit on them to make sure they hella wouldn't drown. And we're… us. No way they fucked up _that_ badly. The Starblaster's probably Starbusted, though.” She kicks some sand into the ocean, sadly. “Pour one out for our pimp ass spaceship.”

“Moment of silence.” Taako plucks a brown string of kelp out of his hair and plops it into the water. After a pause, he adds, “But we should go find it anyway. Fixing it's the only way to get out of here, and—more importantly—all my clothes are on it.”

“You're right. How am I supposed to borrow them if they're at the bottom of the ocean?” She smiles at him, before getting real. “Okay, yeah, but I am super not into the idea of going back into the water after it almost goddamn drowned us. Do you remember that scroll we saw—Jaws, Taako?”

He’s already talking over her—“Because it wants to keep my closet, shit, I'd kill for it too.”

“All right. I'll let you do the honors, since your bag is transmutation.” She stares down into the water, waiting for Taako to cast the spell. The water is clear enough that she can see their reflections. “Can I just say that we are definitely pulling off this beached look?”

“Fucking nailing it. All this sand on my face? Exfoliating the hell out of it.”

 

* * *

 

Finding the Starblaster was…

Well, they _found_ it.

They also found that there’s mermaids in this world. And they talk. And they’re kind of mean.

“I want to go on record now—Where's Lucretia when you need her? I want this written down in both her journals,” Lup ranted. “ _Swimming fucking sucks_. I move to demote Cap'nport for crashing our ship and almost killing us all permanently.”

Weighed down by soaked clothes, they trudged back out to the same beach they started on.

“Yeah, I can't believe they wouldn't let you at least take the clothes out of the ship.”

She gave him a Look™ again. “I sort of meant the destroying ten ships to get our ship back deal.”

“Ohhh. Yeah. Unfortunate,” he said, very unconvincingly. “But they're the bad guys harpooning cute whales, so who cares, right?”

That was the deal they had to strike with the mermaids, who wouldn’t let them go near the Starblaster.

“Yeah, you're right.”

Then she’s quiet for a bit. After walking long enough down the uneven shoreline, a town and some docks starts coming into sight.

“You think the others will be cool with it?” Lup asks. “If we find them?”

Taako laughs to himself. “Considering most of them were down to end a civilization before you slapped us with that wisdom... I _don't_ think it's gonna be a big deal. Not if you’re in.”

“Yeah, remind me never to let you guys do missions on your own, all right?”

 

* * *

 

“Lup!”

Lup’s head jerks up at the sound of her name, coming from somewhere within the bustle of the town market they stumbled across.

“Taako!” the same voice shouts.

And they see a familiar face bobbing through the crowd, rushing toward them.

“You’re alright!” Lucretia says. Then her brows knit together when she gets a good look at them. “And... you're... still wet?”

It had been an entire day since the crash. Lucretia looked cleaned up, prim and proper as always. As if she found this town and got situated right away. That’s probably what the rest of the crew were up to while Lup and Taako’s first move was diving right back into the ocean that spat them out.

“Yeah,” Lup answers flatly. “We found the ship.”

“Oh.” Lucretia’s eyes pop open and her mouth forms a perfect tiny ‘o’ the way it always does when she says _Oh._ “That, that's great. We've been negotiating getting a different ship here, to use it to, to dig the Starblaster out.”

Lup elbows her gently and smiles. “I'm glad you're okay, too, you know.”

“I am! I am glad. I was looking for you before I found this place.”

“Mhm. Did you manage to salvage your journals? I need you to write something down for me…”

Lucretia visibly deflates at the question. Lup is taken aback, as that is the complete opposite reaction she normally had to being asked to jot something down.

“No, I couldn't bring my journals with me,” Lucretia says, “The ocean would destroy them so I, just, thought it safer to leave them. It sucked.”

“Oh, dear,” Taako chimed in. “Do you need a hug? Hug her, Lup.”

He wasn’t a hugger.

She wonders if Lucretia is a hugger.

“Well, _I_ wanted to look for you guys, too,” Lup says, opting to test the waters by placing a consoling hand on Lucretia’s shoulder, “But Taako wanted to find the ship. Which... We did. But some mermaids are holding it hostage until we kill some whalers. It's a long story.”

Lucretia’s eyes dart up to meet hers, startlingly intent. “Did you say mermaids?”

“Yeeeeeeah,” Lup’s face scrunches into a grimace at the thought of them. She hears Taako make a little “ _eugh_ ” sound over her shoulder and assumes he’s making a similar face. “They were pretty though,” Lup adds.

“Wow.” Lucretia sighs the word more than she says it.

Then she’s reaching into her satchel and whipping out a new journal and quill that she has already bought somehow. She’s an expert at writing while standing with a book in the crook of her elbow. Lup cranes over the page to see what she’s scrawling: _Mermaids are real and they are pretty._

“Oh—This is important,” Lup tells her. “Probably deserves its own page.”

Lucretia actually instantly flips to a new page and holds her quill over it excitedly.

Lup smiles. “ _Swimming fucking sucks_.”

The quill doesn’t touch the page. Lucretia looks up and meets her eyes. “Pardon?”

Once more, with conviction, Lup says, “Swimming. Fucking. Sucks.”

She doesn’t break eye contact. Lucretia blinks at her.

“You know how hard it was to find our ship in the entirety of the bullshit ocean? Swimming sucks. Jot that the fuck down.” Lup’s fingertip creeps over the top of Lucretia’s journal to tap the blank page. “Also,” she adds, quickly and as if it's not important, “They said there's some asshole whaling ships killing their friends and we can have the Starblaster back if we take ten of them out.”

“Oh, wow. I. Okay.” Lucretia’s eyes dart down and she writes ‘ _swimming sucks’_ in tiny letters on its own page, then flips back to write the other stuff. “We can't actually do that, though. That would get us in, uh, deep trouble. With the human people here.” (By the way, Lucretia is talking at the same time that she’s writing down what Lup just told her, and it is mindblowing. Lup can’t even prepare spells and listen to music with lyrics at the same time. Lucretia keeps talking without looking up, unaware of how gone with the wind Lup’s dome is right now.) “We would basically be... I think we'd be pirates.”

Taako leans in and whispers, "That's so fucking sexy."

_Yep_.

“It's either that or murder a bunch of mermaids who just wanna protect their friends,” Lup says. “Which isn't something I'm willing to do.”

Lucretia is quiet for a minute, reading over what she wrote, thinking it over. Eventually, she concedes, “Yeah, that's worse.” She tucks her fresh journal under her arm and asks, “Do you... You wanna see the new ship?”

“Hell yeah, I wanna see the ship,” Taako says. “What'd you cook up for us, Lucretia?”

With a jerk of her head in the direction of the docks, she spins around and starts leading them to it. Along the way she explains how they got it. “Well, we found an ad for someone who wanted to commission a crew, and I... kind of told him the opening act of _Treasure Island_. He bought it and gave us a ship in return for following a treasure map I drew twenty minutes beforehand, and supposedly bringing back the treasure.”

Lup high fives her first, because that’s definitely worthy of it, then shoots a look at Taako and mouths, _Did you read Treasure Island?_

_No!,_ he mouths back, looking incredulous that she even asked.

She turns back to Lucretia. “Nice job. Were you able to find the others?”

“Uh, most of them. I washed up with Merle, we found Magnus and Davenport nearby. Still no Barry. Merle and Magnus are combing the beaches for him.”

“Fuck. I knew he couldn't swim,” Lup mutters darkly.

She doesn’t have much time to linger on that worry, since they approach a super badass-looking pirate ship that Taako flips over.

“Is that our ride? Is that it? Hell yes, fuckin _dope_.” He rushes up the gangway and poses on the ship. From up there, he calls out, “Tell me how cool I look!”

“You look like a nerd!” Lup shouts back while flashing him a grin and two enthusiastic thumbs up. She turns to Lucretia to ask, “What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“The ship. Obviously. It needs a name.”

“Oh,” her eyes and mouth do that little perfect round ‘o’ thing again, “Right. Hm. What's a good ship name?”

“LUPCRETIA,” Taako shouts from the deck.

Lup waves her hand and the letters _Lupcretia_ appear on the side of the ship. On her face right now would be the world’s largest shit-eating grin. The current world record holder for most shits eaten in a minute. Lucretia is gaping, either horrified or delighted.

“You like it? I think you ought to Captain the fuck outta this thing.”

Lup thinks she sees a blush creeping over Lucretia’s face before she covers her face with her book. “Ohh my god, no.”

“Why not?” Lup prods, eyes glittering with mischief. “You're smart and good with both your hands, Captain.”

“I—Thank—?” Lucretia stammers, words muffled by the book over her face.

Lup is persistent. “Besides, there's no way the rest of us wouldn't steer this shit directly into an iceberg or something, like in that scroll, _Titanic_.”

Lucretia’s book comes down, and her face looks surprisingly composed. “No, I'm pretty sure Captain Davenport should handle it. We’re in the tropics, anyway.”

“Come on, he literally just crashed our other ship. You're gonna trust him with another one?” Lup’s eyes veer skyward in exasperation.

“You—You can't just make me captain, the spot's been taken.”

“MUTINY,” Taako yells down at them, leaning over the ship’s railing.

“Yeah, Taako and I already decided, and you think anyone's gonna argue with us? We're pretty insufferable as a team.”

As if on cue, Lup hears two familiar voices shout her name simultaneously behind her back. Her friends came back at just the right time.

“Merle! Magnus!” She greets them with relieved high fives. “We're going to be pirates now and Lucretia's gonna captain our ship, you down with that?”

“Hell yeah,” Merle says, without taking any time to think about it.

“Super down,” Magnus agrees before bounding up the gangway to reunite with Taako.

Lucretia’s careful composure melts into an expression of utter disbelief.

Lup slides a smug look over to her. “You've been overruled. We need to get you a cool hat. Merle, let her borrow your eye patch, she's gotta get the look right.”

Merle doesn’t hesitate to pull it off his head.

“No! Put, Put that back on, I don't want it. That's gross.” Lucretia scrambles to swat away his offering.

“God, _fine_ ,” he scoffs, deeply offended, before storming off into the ship.

Lucretia’s eyes flit from the ship, to Lup, to her own feet. After a moment of consideration, her good old composure comes back.

She gives in. “I'll take a cool hat.”

Lup’s grin is nothing short of beaming as she conjures the single dopest captain’s hat of all time. She hears Taako make an inarticulate noise of intense jealousy in the distance.

“I want to do the honors,” Lup insists.

Like a real chill coronation, she lifts the hat over Lucretia and places it on her head. She spends a few seconds carefully shifting the hat to the coolest possible position. Lucretia is looking at her the entire time, only giving a hesitant smile. Lup conjures up an eyepatch too, just for shits and gigs. She dangles it in front of Lucretia.

“Look, this patch is, it's cool, but, I kind of need both eyes. I use them a lot.”

Lup sighs theatrically. But she’s not actually all that disappointed. This is still a win. “As long as you recognize that it is, indeed, _cool as hell_ —” She slips the patch over her own eye for aesthetic.

Lucretia’s eyes widen and her lips part in the shape of a neat little circle, but she doesn’t say anything. Lup is 100% sure that she is very visibly thinking _Oh shit, that’s so hot._ Lup is definitely like, _I know_ , and tries to wink, but her winking eye is covered behind the eyepatch. It still kinda works out though. She’s pretty sure she’s just that fuckin’ cute.

Lucretia doesn't know how to handle this. She just sort of walks away, quietly screaming with her mouth closed. Lup follows behind her new captain, smiling to herself.


End file.
